Chapter Text
Jason
The first month after she was gone was the hardest. Jason still struggled with the effects of the Lazarus Pit, with the bubbling hatred for The Replacement and Bruce’s abandonment and everything he feels for Sarah - because, at the root of it, The Pit hates that his capability to love is still there, is still deeply rooted in the past and his relationship with Sarah Grayson - simmering just beneath surface.
It got more difficult to control as time passed. He wanted them to hate him. Needs it.
He meets the Bats who remain with a bag of heads. It doesn’t deter Dick. He meets Tim at the end of a knife in Titan’s Tower and nearly kills him. It doesn’t deter Dick.
Jason tried to kill Tim so many times during that first month that he lost count of the attempts.
It still doesn’t deter Dick.
Sarah’s words echo on Dick’s lips every single time they unintentionally cross paths. Jason knew they were hers. He hasn’t seen her in months - and no one, not even the Bats, have caught her presence on patrol in Gotham - but he knows because his words drip with it.
“I won’t force you, but we will be here when you’re ready to come home.’’
And he doesn’t understand why. He doesn’t understand how his older brother, the one who never really cared enough to know him before he died, is so willing to still love him despite the cruelty he’s inflicted upon the youngest Bat.
“We will be here when you’re ready to come home. And so will she.”
For the first month of her disappearance, Jason Todd has to once again learn how to adapt to a world where Sarah Grayson-Wayne is not present. It’s hard. It’s hard when he knows she’s somewhere out there, alive, and he doesn’t know where. Her presence haunts him even when he’s committing sins.
Like remembering her as his hands are covered in blood helps Jason know that someone will forgive him for this.
***
When Jason returns home the night after the Manor explosion, he’s dumbstruck by the realization as he removes his armor that Sarah seemed to have snuck something into his belt when he’d kissed her. Clever girl.
It’s a drive barely bigger than his thumb. It’s marked with a name - JPT, 182 DAYS - that makes his stomach clench with dread as he moved across the apartment to find his laptop and insert the drive. The moment he opens the first file, his heart stops.
It’s marked for the week after he died.
The camera opens onto a dark room. A single figure emerges from the shadow, enveloped in a royal blue sweatshirt that’s far too big on her, and she sits in the chair that is meant for a grown man.
Little Grayson stares at the camera of the Batcomputer and begins talking,
“It’s been one week, Jason.” She murmurs. “One week since Bruce came home and said your body had been claimed by an explosion. That you were gone, and that he hadn’t been fast enough to save you. I still don’t know why you didn’t just let me go with you… maybe I could’ve done something.” Her fingers curl around the cuff of the sweatshirt sleeve tight enough to turn her knuckles white.
“I had something I was going to ask you when you got back home… but today we finally buried you, and that question died on my lips when we put that body in the grave. It doesn’t feel right to let you go. Part of me, the part in denial, says you’re not really dead at all. But I know I’m naive. I’ve always been naive.”
Jason snorts. That’s typical.
“There were so many things I loved about you. Things that drove Dick and Alfred and Bruce nuts…” Soft laughter falls past your lips as you rest your head in your hand. “But I would not and will never change a thing about you. If you are really gone, Jason…. I hope you’re at peace.” Sarah’s eyes meet the camera, dark circles just beginning to form and red-rimmed from crying. Jason knew then that his death will haunt Sarah. That she will never be over the guilt that comes with it. “I hope you knew I love you.”
The camera goes dark.
Jason promptly sat up from his spot on the couch and rushed to the bathroom, white-knuckling the toilet as he vomited into it.
He didn’t touch the thumb drive for another two months.
***
Tim
He reread that letter constantly even three months after Sarah was gone.
I’ll be home before your twenty-first.
I love you.
Sarah.
That’s it. That’s all she’d left him. Dick had told Tim after he’d woken up in the hospital that Sarah had a case out of the country that she’d had to do alone. Dick hadn’t known about Cassandra Cain. He hadn’t known about the nature of the case itself. Hadn’t known about the potential Son of the Bat.
Tim would have a field day if he learned Bruce had a blood son.
The gunshots weren’t terrible, according to the nurse. She said that someone had mostly taken care of the bleeding before he’d arrived at the hospital with the Commissioner. Tim had to try to remember who it was for several days. All he could remember was a gleaming red helmet and quiet cursing under their breath.
He’d learn later that was Jason. Jason had been the one to keep him alive until Gordon got him to Gotham General.
He remembered the whisper of a kiss on his forehead and a brush of fingers through his hair. It’s just flashes. Remnants.
That’s exactly what it is now, standing here on a rooftop overlooking Gotham City News after leaving The Belfry for the night for patrol. Remnants of who the Bats used to be are what stand in place of Gotham’s protector.
Dick is somewhere across the city for a meeting with Penguin who has, apparently, turned over a new leaf in the months since Batman’s death.
Tim doesn’t believe it for a minute.
“Robin, you read me?”
Oracle has also taken up residence with Robin and Nightwing in the Belfry. With the Manor out of commission and no current intentions to rebuild it, Alfred had told them of the Belfry after Bruce had demanded his kids have a safe and secure respite if they were going to continue protecting Gotham in Batman’s stead.
“I read you, O. Go ahead.”
“B’s tracker just turned back on for the first time since the explosion,” Oracle replied. “He’s coming towards the Belfry. I don’t think N and I can take care of this alone. Come home?”
Robin froze, instinctively reaching to his side for the bo-staff that hung there. Dick had also informed him that Bruce was alive but would not be coming home for some time. Nothing else other than that. Alfred had been left behind in his stead to take care of his children while he figured out what to do now that Batman had hung up his cowl.
None of his kids had heard from him since.
He’d heard from Alfred that Bruce had been furious when he found out Sarah had stolen a commercial plane and bribed the pilot as Bruce Wayne’s daughter before disappearing. The only thing she’d taken with her was spare clothing, her escrima sticks, and a burner phone to text one word to Dick every month.
Alive.
Sarah had disappeared before Bruce had, though, so he was slightly afraid of what their father’s reaction would be.
“I’ll be right there.”
“He seems to be going towards Hood’s hideouts. Like he’s looking for him, but if I’m right, he’ll come to the Belfry first. Meet me at the gate.”
Bruce going after Jason during his first days back in Gotham would no doubt lead to a disaster of a magnitude he and Dick could not handle.
When he did finally get back into the Belfry, sans domino, Tim froze in the doorway as both Barbara and Dick were on either side of a broad-shouldered figure trembling with quiet fury in the center of the room. Had Tim not been so familiar with Bruce’s gait he would have never known it was his father.
“I’m only going to ask this one more time,” Bruce remarked calmly. “It has been four months. Where is my daughter?”
****
Sarah
The first days away were the hardest ones. Having to learn how to drop everything in order to follow Cassandra to Nanda Parbat was probably the most difficult thing she’d ever done. There was no money once she left Gotham. No money, no phone - other than her burner, which she refused to part with because she couldn’t just leave Dick and Tim without the assurance she was alive and would come back - no belongings other than what she’d brought with her.
Cassandra was used to this kind of life. It had taken nearly a month to get her to divulge any information about her past, but after finding the file on her father in Sarah’s bag, she’d stormed up to her in the hovel they’d secured for the night to angrily sign at her that it felt like a betrayal.
“Took his file. Read it. Betrayal. Unkind.”
Sarah took her hands and pressed them against the younger girl’s shoulder before replying, “My life has taught me one thing: I cannot trust everyone, and not everyone will trust me. Me taking your file was me knowing who you were. Where you came from. And after it… I know now that I want to know you as you. Not that. Not before. The now. ”
Cassandra had clung to her every word.
It had been the middle of the fifth month when they finally infiltrated The League. Since the disbandment after Talia and Ra’s death, most of the loyalists had fled their HQ and gone all over the world. The only ones who remained in Nanda Parbat were the rebels who had taken it over and swore their allegiance to Nyssa.
Nyssa Al’Ghul, Talia’s sister.
Sarah hadn’t known who she was until Hong Kong when an informant for her intercepted them both. It hadn’t ended well.
Nyssa claimed she had more information about The Son of the Bat and that all their questions would be answered by the time they arrived there. It took five months.
The doors to the sanctuary were ajar, casting an eery green light through the cracks as she and Cassandra emerged from the sewers and into the largest part of the room. The throne Ra’s had occupied during his time as mostly a corpse was empty. Discarded tubes and medical equipment were scattered around the room in front of what looked to be a destroyed Lazarus Pit. No essence of the rejuvenating liquid remained.
“Well, well….” Two knives and two escrima sticks emerged from beneath heavy robes as Cassandra and Sarah turned towards the eastern door while another woman stepped through. “I see you made it, Sarah Wayne. Consider me impressed.”
It wasn’t hard to tell just by looking at her that this was Talia’s sister.
“I assume you’re Nyssa?”
“That’s correct.”
Sarah opened her mouth to reply when she caught the shuffle of fabric from behind Nyssa’s tall, lean form. She paused and lowered her escrima sticks. From behind the elder Al Ghul emerged a little boy, no older than seven, with a remarkable resemblance to Bruce. It was all in his face.
His eyes were Talia’s, but everything else was Bruce's.
Her heart pounded so furiously at the sight of the boy that it took Cassandra nudging her with the hilt of her dagger to knock her from her reverie. “Forgive me,” Sarah remarked. “When I was told I was coming to meet The Son of the Bat, I didn’t think I would actually be meeting a child.”
Nyssa settled her hands on the boy's shoulders. She’d give him credit for the extremely impassive expression he currently wore coupled with the vacant, green gaze. It wouldn’t come as a shock if he had been trained to be the best in the League because he was the Demon’s Grandson.
“His name is Damian. Before Talia returned to Gotham, she asked me to do one last thing before she died,” Nyssa said. “She wanted Damian to be taken home to his father to be raised in Gotham.”
Why?
“And you asked me here, why?”
“Cassandra was my messenger solely for this purpose. I knew she would bring me she who is most trusted by Batman,” Nyssa replied. “And Damian deserves a life to know his father. He is only seven. There is still so much that can be learned.”
Sarah exhaled sharply and looked back down at the boy. Even just from the flicker of carefully restrained anger beneath the surface, it was clear that Damian believed he had a sole purpose to fulfill being The Son of the Bat and the grandson of Ra’s Al Ghul.
Conditioned to be an assassin serving one sole purpose, Sarah couldn’t imagine what Bruce would find out whenever she took Damian home.
“What’s to say he’ll listen to me?”
Damian swallowed the knot in his throat and clenched his jaw as he stepped closer to Sarah. “I have been instructed to be as attentive and agreeable as possible by Aunt Nyssa. I will-“ Damian grit his teeth and tipped his head up as he knelt and removed the katana from the sheath on his back. “Comply, Sarah Wayne.”
Sarah placed her gloved palms on the center of the blade before slowly pushing it downward.
“You don’t need to comply with anything, Damian.” She said quietly. “Cassandra and I will take you home to meet your father. And you will keep that katana here-“
He didn’t visibly show it, but she could see the apprehension.
“The katana was gifted to him by Talia, Sarah,” Nyssa interjected. “I would not force him to part with it as it is all he has left of her.”
Sarah’s eyes softened as she nodded and stored away her escrima sticks, nodding to Cassandra to do the same. Damian nodded his satisfaction with being able to keep his katana and stepped to Sarah’s side.
Sarah and Nyssa nodded to one another as the two younger girls slipped their hoods back over their heads.
Time to get home.
****
Jason, Month Six
He got to the end of the drive just near the six-month mark. After spending most of his free time flitting from safe house to safe house, Jason had spent his time rewatching every single video until he practically had them memorized.
The last two were the worst ones.
The camera opens, and this time it's to a very obvious fight. Bruce is the one at the computer at 4 AM and he has his back turned to the camera, chair cast out of the way to show both his form and that of the younger Grayson. The audio is garbled and distorted until Bruce disappears off camera alongside a flash of gray hair, and then Little Wing is settling back in the chair.
Her eyes are dark. Way darker than he's ever seen them, and there's an air of loathing and despair that settles around Sarah like the cape Batman wears. Dark as night and even more suffocating.
"I don't know why I keep coming down here. Is this a way to torture me? My penance for not doing enough for Jason?" Jason's chest constricts too tight and he rubs at the dip in his sternum to try to ease the ache there he cannot actually do anything about. It's a phantom pain. The pain he can feel from Sarah. "Jason, you will always be the best thing that ever happened to me. Let's note that makes Dick really jealous... but he can shove off and keep all his regal titles and all the things the obnoxious and overprotective big brothers get to do. And he's such a good brother. I wish he saw himself that way." Sarah’s eyes meet the camera. "I wish you knew how we mourned you. Bruce has been acting so distant and cold and I haven't seen him cry a single time since he brought you home.. but I know he mourns. Or at least I'd like to think he does. Who knows anymore? But he is not my father. My father wouldn't berate me for not being able to let the boy I love go. I hope you see yourself the way I see you if you ever see this." Laughter bubbles past her throat. It's so.. bitter. The thought of what she just said is so utterly ridiculous she cannot even begin to comprehend why she said it. "Idiot. Maybe he's right. Maybe I am stupid."
Jason pauses the video before it goes dark to gaze at Sarah. Her hair is longer and unkempt like Sarah hasn’t found it in her to have the energy to brush her hair. She’s wearing the same blue sweatshirt that Jason hasn't recognized until now as his. It's highly likely that Sarah wouldn't let Alfred touch it because it smelled like him. Alfie, you sentimental sap.
His fingers graze her cheek. When he finds Sarah back in Gotham, he intends to give this back. This isn't something you just throw away. Even with The Replacement in the picture and her obvious dedication to the Bats, there's something stirring low in Jason's gut that tells him Sarah loves him just as much now as she did then.
And well... Red Hood is allowed to love. He deserves to.
By the time Dick found him again, Jason had mostly stopped talking. There wasn’t a reason to. His older brother had periodically checked on him to keep his promise to Sarah since she’d gone, but Dick had his own obligations and none of them were to Jason.
The world was quieter when he wasn’t screaming at it ragefully.
Six months to the day, Jason found Dick following him to the rooftop where he was planning to stake out a trafficking ring. He tried to play a prank on him by falling off the roof. It didn’t work.
What did work was when Dick told Jason that Sarah was coming home.
“I got a message from Sarah,” Dick said softly. “She's on her way home."
Green tinged the edge of Jason’s eyes as he listened to Dick’s explanation. He’d just gotten a hold of how to properly control The Pit, but to hear that Sarah had abandoned him for what remained of the League made it simmer just beneath the surface.
He couldn’t let it out. Not again. Not after the last time.
Jason removed his helmet and peered up at his brother who hadn’t seen his face once since he died. It was almost comical how shocked he was by the streak of white through the center of deep black curls.
He slowly started signing, “Is this you asking me to come home?”
Unknown to Jason, Tim had been teaching Dick sign for six months. Ever since Alfred had told them that Cassandra was mute and had come into their lives by trailing Bruce, the pair had decided they needed to be up to par with the best ways to communicate with potential allies.
Dick smiled and nodded. “Yeah, Jay. This is me asking you to come home.”
Dick nearly fell off the roof when Jason nodded and stood to his feet, pointing toward Warehouse 6-D where their trafficking ring was hiding.
“Okay, but you’re helping me take out these pricks going after the Narrow’s littlest girls.”
***
Bruce
Coming to terms with no longer wearing the cowl was difficult. Immensely difficult. Having to come to terms with the fact that his childhood home, his children’s childhood home, was gone? Also difficult.
None of that would compare to when Alfred told Bruce that his daughter had stolen a commercial plane after bribing the pilot with almost half a thousand dollars and the pretty, vicious smile of Bruce Wayne’s eldest daughter.
He was equal parts furious and impressed.
Having to get his assets in order and leave things to his kids in his will took most of his time for the first month or two. With Alfred being the middle man - as Bruce Wayne was, to the greater public, very dead - and Bruce giving explicit instruction on who got what, it got done as quickly as it could’ve if he were still alive.
There wasn’t much left to give other than his resources left in the banks, Wayne Enterprises, and the subsidiaries that Jason and Tim had helped him build when they were younger. The homeless shelter in the Narrows. The soup kitchen. Those went to Jason.
Everything else went to Tim, including the position of CEO. Alfred confessed that he almost passed out once he’d delivered the news to his youngest son.
Bruce had left his mother’s things to Sarah, including the wedding ring. He’d had all of his parents' most prized possessions moved to the Belfry long before the Manor had burnt down.
By month four, everything was concluded. He could finally come out of the woodwork and reveal himself to his kids and to Barbara.
But no one had an answer for where his daughter was. Both she and Cassandra, who he had not seen once since their interaction at the Asylum. Finding out the answers he had not been given required going to the Belfry and encountering his children for the first time since the night Batman died.
Needless to say, they were not too happy to see him.
With Dick on his left and Barbara on his right, Bruce ran his hands over his face and exhaled sharply before asking, “It’s been four months. Where is my daughter?”
Dick tapped his fingers against his thigh, blue eyes flickering between Bruce and whoever was clearly standing at the elevator gate behind him. “Sarah’s not here,” Tim’s voice called as he approached. “Hasn’t been for four months. It’s just been us keeping control of the city.”
“Us and Red Hood,” Dick interjected. “She’s fine, Bruce. She’s alive. Wherever she is.”
Bruce didn’t seem convinced. He’d heard about Jason’s antics during the first couple of months he’d been underground. How he’d nearly killed his little brother in Titan’s Tower. How he’d collected a bag of heads. How he’d taken ultimate control over the crime lords of the city and now basically ran the criminal underworld.
He would’ve preferred his son come back home and get away from that kind of life.
That was another unfortunate truth. While Sarah’s influence has coaxed Jason into saving Bruce from Scarecrow at the Mansion, they still hadn’t properly reconciled for all that happened. His baby boy was out of reach.
And that stung.
“Tt.” Bruce grumbled and ran his hands over his face. There were no coherent words to explain how he felt. Best to let it lie. Dick’s fragile trust was in his hands, and he was not about to break that again.
“Look, I’ll prove it. Babs?”
“On it.”
Barbara led Bruce toward the monitors as she brought up the records of where she’d managed to ping Sarah’s burner phone. Over the last four months, it had come up in multiple locations across Asia, all of which were leading in the general direction of the Himalayas. He only knew one significant location in the Himalayas.
“She only ever texts one word,” Tim explained. “Alive. It’s the only way we’ve been able to keep a record of where she’s been. I’m not sure if she’s purchased a new burner as she took no actual money with her, or if she’s using the original one she bought.”
The last pinged location was Hong Kong.
“She told Alfred she had a case that she could divulge no details on and took Cassandra Cain with her,” Dick said. “Cassandra Cain, as in the daughter of David Cain, elite assassin? That David Cain?”
Bruce grimaced. He had assumed so, though the girl had never confirmed it for him.
“We don’t know how long she’ll be gone, but she told Tim she’d be back before his twenty-first. That’s in two months. In the meantime…” Barbara motioned to the map of Gotham in front of her. “We’re continuing to work with Red Hood on dismantling the crime syndicates, specifically the one run by Black Mask. Here’s what he’s given us so far.”
So, from that point forward, Bruce worked alongside Alfred and Barbara in the Belfry to be the exact thing his kids needed: A real mentor. Dick, Tim, and Jason could look after the city until Sarah got back, and then they’d all be together again.
And really… that’s what he needs. That’s what will make him better.
***
Sarah, Month Six, Two Weeks Before Tim's Birthday
It’s… it’s gone.
The first thing she did upon returning to Gotham was a return to the sight of Wayne Manor. Or what was left of it.
“This doesn’t make any sense. Why is it… why is it in ruins? And where is everyone?” Sarah murmured quietly to herself, lightly knocking her knuckles against her temple. “C’mon, Grayson… think. Think.”
Damian was not used to hesitance. He was not used to thinking this thoroughly before doing. Hesitance got you killed. Not thinking ahead of your enemy made you dead.
“If enemies were to happen upon us right now, we would all be slaughtered in a minute amount of time,” Damian remarked sharply. “Which is a luxury we do not have, Grayson. What is going on?”
The things are here, but you can’t see.
When in doubt…
“Seek the lone oak tree,” Sarah whispered. Before Damian or Cassandra could interject, Sarah sprinted across the Wayne property to seek the lone oak tree in the only thing that remained standing: The family graveyard.
She was grateful, at least, that the Wayne Family graveyard was still standing. Most of Bruce’s family had been buried here over the years. She had come here the night she’d decided to follow Cassandra before the house had burnt to bury her most precious belongings here.
Right beside Jason’s grave.
“Dames, hand me the shovel and keep watch. Cassandra,” Cass lifted her eyes to meet Sarah’s as she tossed the younger girl her burner phone. “Text Dick. Just one word. Do you remember?”
Cass nodded and signed, h o m e.
Sarah nodded and turned to grab the shovel. It didn’t take long. Once she’d hit the surface of the small metal container she’d stored here, she dusted the dirt off of it and pulled it out of the hole.
Sarah Grayson-Wayne.
“Text back,” Cass called over her shoulder. “Brother said, ‘Belfry.’’’
“Good. I know exactly where that is. Let’s go.”
***
They were seated at a family dinner, somehow, when she entered with Damian and Cassandra. Alfred greeted her at the door with joyful words and a swift kiss to the forehead. He hadn’t quite seen Damian yet who was still hidden behind Sarah’s tall, lean form.
Everything buckled the moment she recognized those black curls. When Sarah’s eyes fell on Jason as he casually buried his head in his arms and proceeded to hide behind Dick by slipping under the table, Bruce lifted his head from his morning paper and froze as Damian emerged from behind Sarah.
No one dared to move. Sarah swore Alfred stopped breathing behind her.
“My name is Damian Al Ghul,” The boy remarked as he met Bruce’s gaze. “And I am The Son of the Bat.”
That was when all hell broke loose.
But quietly.
Because no Wayne can ever dare to express their emotions, right?